An Introduction to Prompt Engineering

Summary

Prompt engineering is a key skill for anyone who wants to optimize their return on investment in M365 Copilot. This chapter sets out to demystify prompt engineering. It introduces the readers to the basics of large language models (LLMs), which are used for various language tasks with M365 Copilot. LLMs can be powerful tools for any language‐related tasks, such as content creation, summarization, or information retrieval. The chapter presents three prompt mnemonics: role, task, and format. The Copilot Lab is a great resource to help the readers to learn about various prompts that they can try across the range of Microsoft 365 applications. Creating a prompt library is a useful way to save and reuse prompts. One possible development that could affect the role of prompt engineering is automatic prompt optimization.